Koizumi vows to privatize
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated his determination Tuesday to privatize Japan’s postal services as the Diet began deliberations on a package of four government-sponsored bills on the issue.
The House of Representatives started debate on bills to allow private firms to begin offering mail services and to establish a new public corporation in 2003 to take over the three state-run postal services — mail, postal savings and “kampo” life insurance.
Koizumi told the lower house plenary session that allowing private firms into the industry would be “a milestone toward the eventual privatization” of the three postal services.
The planned establishment of the public postal corporation is “designed to offer more diversified services to the public and to improve the efficiency of postal services,” the premier said.
“Now that I have submitted the bills, I am resolved to see their passage through the Diet,” he added.
Postal privatization is one of Koizumi’s pet projects and he regards it a key pillar of his structural reform scheme.
It is uncertain that the Diet can pass them before the ongoing session ends on June 19 as the administration hopes, as Hiromu Nonaka, an influential politician in the LDP whose support for the bills is seen as vital for their passage, threatened to withdraw his support for them earlier in the day.
Openly expressing his displeasure at Koizumi’s remarks Monday on the issue, Nonaka told reporters, “I thought these bills should pass the Diet to ensure the smooth launch of a public postal corporation, but now that the prime minister has said such a thing, maybe I should reconsider it.”
On Monday, Koizumi told Klaus Zumwinkel, president of Deutsche Post AG, “I’ve succeeded in bridging the moat around the castle by submitting the bills. Now I will aim at the keep.”
The remarks, employing a military metaphor, were taken as indicating Koizumi’s urge to privatize the three postal services.
Deutsche Post is a private German company born of a governmental body that first became a public corporation in 1990, a process Koizumi is seeking in his plan to privatize Japan’s postal services.
The bills submitted to the Diet by the government earlier in the month do not state whether the planned public corporation would eventually be privatized.
Nonaka, a former LDP secretary general, heads a group of LDP lawmakers with vested interests in the postal sector.
The lawmakers have stiffly opposed privatization, saying that allowing private firms into the industry may lead to the closure of some publicly run post offices.
They were also offended when the government submitted the four bills to parliament without obtaining prior consent from the LDP, a step rarely taken by the government.
However, a mood of support for the bills quickly spread within the party after Nonaka said Saturday they should be enacted during the current Diet session.
